No Man's Land - Sapper

This book was written by a British Army officer and decorated Western Front veteran. Soldiers could not publish books using their real names, so newspaper magnate Lord Northcliffe christened McNeile, Sapper, to reflect his Royal Engineers background, under which pseudonym the book was published. McNeile also wrote the Bulldog Drummond spy/wartime adventures.

No Man's Land is made up of five parts: The Way To The Land is a preface to the rest of the book in which fictional character Clive Draycott travels in Europe prior to the outbreak of the war. Part II The Land consists of 8 stories detailing the day to day lives of soldiers in the trenches. Part III Seed Time is about a salesman turned soldier, and Part IV Harvest in which Sapper puts forward the theory that war is awful, and many suffer but those who survive it can be changed for the better. Themes of class, gender, history abound. - Summary by afinevoice with grateful thanks to M Porcius